Mono & SourceGear Move Forward

miguel writes "The Mono project keeps evolving and is quickly becoming a mature platform for running .NET applications on Linux. SourceGear and Ximian have entered into a partnership to make their .NET-based Vault client software available to Linux and Unix users by implementing the missing web services support in Mono. The formal announcement is here and a developer overview is here. OpenLink has also contributed the functionality to turn Wine into a library that Mono is using to implement the System.Windows.Forms namespace. Another recent progress bit is the fact that Mono can run Eclipse with the IKVM Java VM for .NET"

Comments

What do you think they will do?

[shibbydude]

Popular business plan: Step 1: Design product that runs a proprietary Microsoft system. Step 2: Make it run on Linux, Windows' leading business threat. Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit!!! If no one could figure it out, step 3 might be sell the code to (or settle with) Microsoft so that .NET is once again a Windows-only system. At least this would be my business plan.

Re:What do you think they will do?

[Miguel de Icaza]

"If it's been released as part of the GPL"

Ximian has changed the license for a key part of Mono from the GPL to a license that permits the software to be used in closed-source projects.

The change was made to accommodate Intel, which wanted to contribute to class library work but chafed at the GPL's requirement that software remain open-source only. That provision of the GPL helps ensure that the work of open-source programmers--often volunteers--isn't appropriated for others' gain. Companies that want to adopt the software don't always want to reveal all their software secrets.

We're partnering with Intel and Hewlett-Packard to develop those pieces. One of the concessions we had to make was to switch from one open-source license to another

Intel has a .Net research lab, but part of its requirement is that software produced may be used in proprietary projects as well as open-source projects

Open-source software has been a rallying cry for programmers who wished to undermine Microsoft's power, but with the tightened economy the near-religious fervor for the open-source movement has given way to a more pragmatic view among businesses.

Microsoft has issued legal warnings about the GPL but is more favorably disposed toward this license.

Among programmers writing the class library, about 80 percent said they liked the new license better. However, this opinion wasn't shared by Richard Stallman, a founding father of what has become the open-source movement and the creator and tireless advocate of the GPL.

RMS doesn't like the license switch. It allows proprietary companies to benefit from the software

more here:
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-823734.html

How mature is it?

[Burb]

Let me say first off that I love the idea of Mono and wish it every success. Although it will one day (hopefully) have pretty comprehensive coverage of .NET features, right now it doesn't.

I've just downloaded the port for FreeBsd of mono 0.24 and was delighted to find that hello world works. True, not an exhaustive test but nice to see. Then, I thought, how about seeing if my current applications would be ported. So I looked for the System.DirectoryServices library only to find it wasn't there. OK, not a big deal for some but I need LDAP access. The JIT stuff seems pretty good, but the libs are incomplete.

So a qualified hurrah to all this. I'm delighed so far, but it won't run all .NET code today.

Re:How mature is it?

[sab39]

Interesting - are there any plans to open this up eventually?

Are there any other assemblies that are planned to be released in this way?

If someone in the community contributed an alternative implementation of DirectoryServices under the standard Mono license, would it be accepted?

Thanks,
Stuart (occasional mono user who had to #if out references to this namespace in some code to make it compile under Mono)

This Mono thing is for clever people...

[d-Orb]

Mono can run Eclipse with the IKVM Java VM for .NET"

Well, I am pretty sure that that is a fine achievement, but it looks like one of those scary organical molecules to me :-)

Re:This Mono thing is for clever people...

[Miguel de Icaza]

What this shows is two things: the maturity of the IKVM JITer and the maturity of the Mono runtime as it is able to host this technologically advanced VM to run a large and complex application.

IKVM also helps bridge the two worlds: Java and CIL. Your Java code can then be loaded and used by CIL applications (C#, VB, etc) all running together.

personally i don't rate Eclipse much as a development environment compared to Visual Studio.NET. But i am a big fan of the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT)

ooops...

[hummassa]

Not "as part of the GPL", but GPL-licensed. Microsoft can buy it (the copyright from every Mono copyright owner), pull it from public view, and you and I -- well, we can still fork it! From the source that I checked out from cvs just few seconds before the transaction. He.

Mature?

[truthsearch]

A mature platform? It's in version 0.24. As of today they state 77% of just the core library is implemented. Teamwork and recognition does not imply maturity. The term needs to be used correctly and more sparingly or it'll lose all meaning.

Re:Mature?

[pmz]

The term needs to be used correctly and more sparingly or it'll lose all meaning.

I think much of the meaning is already gone. People will jump on whatever techology looks well presented enough. They get burned, eventually, but, for some reason, these setbacks are quickly forgotten. This process has been repeating for decades and is probably due to the constant influx of unqualified people into the software and IT industries.

Re:Mature?

[Miguel de Icaza]

"Teamwork and recognition does not imply maturity"
actually mono was mature, stable, 100% compatible and bug-free as soon as the Ximian marketing department said so
something else the mono team has copied from Microsoft :^)

I knew it!

[Arandir]

For almost two years now I have been subjected to the religious proselityzing of the .NET cult. "It's platform neutral," they said. "It will run on Linux," they said. "Just trust Miguel and you will be saved," they said. But now they say they will use Wine. What a crock of shit! If .NET is crossplatform then so is MS Word!

I see their fiendish plot now. When every application is a .NET application, and Linux is a merely bootloader for Wine, then there will no longer be a need for Linux.

Re:I knew it!

[The Bungi]

But now they say they will use Wine. What a crock of shit! If .NET is crossplatform then so is MS Word!

Did you RTFA? They are using Wine to implement the forms package only. The rest of the non Win32-specific stuff runs without Wine just fine. There's even bindings for GTK if you're not interested in the full forms package.

Just another "Oh, Ximian/Miguel/et.al are in bed with Microsoft, they suck" uninformed post.

Re:I knew it!

[rhyd]

Well I have to say I find your reply a little bit harsh. Arandir had obviously 'RTFA' because they had picked up the whole Wine fiasco.

its like when the mplayer (don't get me wrong i love mplayer and use it every day) team announced the ability to playback Realplayer videos provided you installed the latest version of Realplayer....?

as i understood it the original goal of mono was to implement the EMCA c# CLR specs and nothing more. Now they are going way beyond that - and the problems they are hitting are because .NET is way to entangled in the win32 api to be truly crossplatform as is. Early adopters caught up in their enthusiasm are understandably disapointed when they hear Wine is the key to making their app crossplatform because they are really not much better off than before .NET. Infact it would be better to reverse the Ximian approach to the problem and implement a lightweight .NET compatibility service as a core Wine module - at least that would be consisistant with the current rule:

if you wanna run windows programs on linux use a Wine

I use KDE, java and Mozilla mail because yeah I do kindof suspect Ximian are in bed with Microsoft

Re:I knew it!

[miguel]

Well, we always said we would implement the whole .NET Framework. The C# compiler, CLI and core class libraries are just a step in that direction.

There are two versions of Windows.Forms: one uses Gtk# and another one uses Wine for its implementation. The differences are covered in our FAQ and on our Winforms page. The wine version is there for those who want complete compatibility with their GUI apps developed on Windows.

If you are willing to live without overriding the WndProc method in the Control class, you can safely stick to the Gtk#-based implementation.

Miguel

MODERATORS BEWARE

[The Bungi]

This guy is a troll. This is the real Miguel de Icaza. Simply look at the troll's posting history as well as his journal entries and make up your mind.

WINE is unnecessary

[GCP]

Only client-side GUI apps that use WinForms need WINE. All other .Net apps -- including ASP.Net, non-GUI apps, Web services, apps that use browsers for their UI, client-side GUI apps using GTK, etc. -- will run without WINE.

Pretty offtopic really

[Burb]

"So it's another GPL project tied to WINE and the MonSter that ate Redmond?"

No

WineLib is there to aid people who want to write Windows.Forms (fat client) applications that are cross-platform. But you could write "pure" *nix stuff using the GTK bindings without using Wine, and you can write console mode and asp.net apps without Wine.

Has nothing to do with the desktop.

Mono is progressing nicely!

[r4lv3k]

I have an application that relies heavily on XML serialization, and am happy to report that the latest System.Xml.Serialization in CVS is now working as it as it should. All the Xml attributes are completely compatible AFAIK and I am seriously considering porting 5% of the code of my app that depends on Managed C++ to use P/Invoke and Mono.

This is a great leap forward for supporting SOAP/WSDL I imagine. My applications pretty much persist themselves into an XML language.

Great work Mono team!

BTW it would be awesome if Mono was optimized for the new AMD64 Opteron!

r4lv3k

80% of what programmers?

[phr1]

What programmers writing the class library liked the new license? In particular, were they volunteers, or getting paid to write it?

My own attitude towards these questions is I'm a relative GPL zealot when it comes to code that I write for free on my own time. I don't see why I should develop products for proprietary software companies without getting paid. However, if I am getting paid, then I'm not so fussy about the license. I suspect a lot of other programmers feel the same way at some level, though they may not be explicit about it.

So if it was paid programmers who liked the license switch, it's easier to understand, even if it means the project will attract fewer volunteers. If it was volunteers who wanted to switch, that just seems kind of self-defeating.

I hope project leaders thinking of choosing non-GPL licenses consider these issues. Some projects of course need volunteers more than others do.